The Perils of Memory Lane When Protecting the Future

Tomorrow I have a job interview.

I haven't worked in at least ten years, because I was grieving the horrendous life I've been given. During that time, I had to deal with the perils of my past; rageous child abuse and sexual abuse, child sexual exploitation, sex trafficking, being a run away, survival sex, child labor trafficking, eight rapes, two attempted rapes, domestic violence, single motherhood, poverty, the projects, rats, roaches, ringworm, bedbugs and a hate crime. I was nine the first time I had sex and two of my earliest sex partners were active duty U.S. military. My mother was a restavek and so was I. Who would hire me?

During that time, I tried hard to hold on to hope. I painted and ideated and cried and watched every episode of Law & Order SVU that I could. I had to see them get the bad guy, and the cops did, almost every time.

It's not like this in real life, I know. Most women and children don't report their abuse, and even if they do, achieving justice doesn't happen very often in abusive situations. The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network estimates that in the U.S. one in 9 girls and 1 in 53 boys under the age of 18 experience sexual abuse or assault at the hands of an adult. 82% of all victims under 18 are female. Females ages 16-19 are 4 times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.  

The job is at an orphanage that cares for abused and abandoned children. The position is that of a Life Skills Coach. I know I have many things to say and illustrate and suggest to these children. Words that could lift their spirits, love that could heal their wounds, stories of hope that they could carry with them always, survival tips that could help  save their lives.

I kind of want the job. Then again, I don't. Truly, I am scared.

There's a part of me that wants to live a carefree life now. I want to marry well, travel, write, make art, sing, dance flamenco and to be full of passion. Then again, I cannot forget where--and what--I come from. There would be no justice in a decision to waste 48 years of survival wisdom that could aid little ones in surviving their dark nights. I had only God. Maybe I can share the Light of Christ with them, too. It is, for many, the thing that pulls us through. So, tomorrow I'm putting on my best dress and I'm stepping out of the domestic violence shelter where I live and I'm walking to my interview and I'm going to do my best to get that job. 

When I began my World Pulse journey, I knew I wanted to save the world. I took a huge beating and a horrendous rape and a wicked humbling before I had to admit to myself that this is not a world that can be saved. People, though, they can be saved. Saved and brought to safety. And so I eventually devised my initiative Sister Safe, hoping to create a newsletter that would share safety tips with women. I didn't want others to suffer as I had suffered.

Now, I'd like to create an initiative to arm as many women as possible with pepper spray. We need it. I only wish that the sweet children who suffer through beatings could have some, too. Since they can't, I'm now determined to become a child advocate who will do her best to see that the children that I encounter are armed with coping mechanisms which mirror the rapid fire nature of pepper spray. Vigilant, staccato, defensive, halting the verbal and physical abuse of their person in a split second. 

I was educated at a college that called itself The World for Women. Because I believe in the power of women's connectivity, I visit World Pulse daily, knowing that I'm connected in the struggle to protect we and our children through institutions that truly want and need to see us be safe. World Pulse has helped me grow as a person, a mother and a changemaker and has seen me through my grief, bad relationships and the death of my mother, who was the one that hurt me most. 

A restavek is a child in Haiti who is given to a family to be their slave. My mother cared for her adopted grandmother daily and slept at the foot of her bed, so as to be at her beck and call. I was a restavek both in my step-father's house and to mother after their divorce, caring for us both while working nearly full-time at McDonald's so as to feed myself and buy clothes. She spent years drunk on the couch taking opiates, and after a work injury she remained addicted and disabled for the rest of her life. Even during my ten year Law and Order binge, I continued to be her slave, running errands, cooking, getting her lotto numbers and cigarettes, feeling as if death had to be a better option than having to spend my life as my family's slave. Because I was women's college-educated, and because of the influence of World Pulse in my life, I was able to walk out on my mother before she became bed-ridden, leaving my sister to care for her. I--the one she constantly deplored and told she wished she'd aborted--finally broke free of my family and my abusers. Armed with the solidarity of sisters who would see me be safe, I am on my way to new initiatives and an evolving sense of purpose. 

I would see the children be free, too, and so tomorrow, I will try.